Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set

by Lisa Jackson

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DR. O’ROURKE WAS QUICK and efficient. His examination took no longer than five minutes, after which he gave Nurse Pratt a few instructions before emerging from the glassed-in room. “I think he’ll be out of isolation tomorrow,” he said, joining Chandra.

  “That’s good.”

  “Know any more about him?”

  She shook her head and began walking with him, wondering why she was even conversing with him. She thought she caught an envious look from Shannon as they left the nursery, but she chided herself afterward. Envious? Of what?

  “The Sheriff’s Department show up at your place?” he asked as they walked. His tone wasn’t friendly, just curious. Chandra chalked his questions up to professional interest.

  “This morning at the crack of dawn. The same two deputies.” She stuffed her hands into her pockets. “They poked around the barn and the grounds. Didn’t find much.”

  O’Rourke pushed the button for the elevator, and the doors opened immediately. “Parking lot?”

  “Yes.” She eyed him for a second, and as the car descended, said, “I’m surprised to see you here this early. Last night you looked like you could sleep for twenty years.”

  “Thirty,” he corrected, then allowed her just the hint of a grin, and she was shocked by the sensual gleam of white teeth against his dark skin. His jaw was freshly shaven, and the scent of soap and leather clung to him, overpowering the antiseptic odor that had filtered through the hospital corridors and into the elevator. “But I’ve learned to survive on catnaps. Five hours and it’s all over for me.” He studied her with that intense gaze that made her throat grow tight, but she held her ground as a bell announced they’d landed at ground level. “What about you?”

  “Eight—at least. I’m running on empty now.”

  He cocked a dubious eyebrow as they walked past the reception area and outside, where the sunlight was bright enough to hurt the eyes. Chandra reached into her purse for her sunglasses and noticed that O’Rourke squinted. The lines near his eyes deepened, adding a rugged edge to his profile. The man was handsome, she’d give him that. Dealing with him would be easier if he were less attractive, she thought.

  “That reporter will be back,” he predicted. “He smells a story and isn’t about to leave it alone. You might be careful what you say.”

  Though she knew the answer from personal experience, she wanted to hear his side of the story. “Why?”

  His lips twisted into a thin line of disapproval and his eyes turned cold. “Words can be misconstrued, taken out of context, turned around.”

  “Sounds like the voice of experience talking.”

  “Just a warning. For your own good.”

  He acted as if he were about to turn away, and Chandra impulsively grabbed the crook of his arm, restraining him. He turned sharply and his gaze landed on her with a force that made her catch her breath. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat and forced the words past her lips. “When can I see the baby? I mean, really see him—hold him.”

  She didn’t remove her fingers and was aware of the tensing of his muscles beneath the sleeves of his shirt and jacket. “You want to hold him?”

  “Oh, yes!” she cried, her emotion controlling her tongue.

  “You feel something special for the child, some sort of bond?” he guessed.

  “I…” She crumbled under the intensity of his gaze. “I guess I feel responsible.”

  When he waited, for what she knew was further elaboration, she couldn’t help but ramble on. “I mean he was found on my property, in my barn. I can’t help but think that someone wanted me to find him.”

  “That you were chosen?” He sounded as if he didn’t believe her, yet he didn’t draw his arm away.

  “Yes. No. I mean—I don’t know.” She’d never been so confused in her life. Always she’d been a take-charge kind of individual, afraid of nothing, ready for any challenge. But one tiny newborn and one very intimidating man seemed to have turned her mind to mush. “Look, Doctor, I just want to hold the baby, if it’s okay with you.”

  He hesitated, and his voice was a little kinder. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

  “What?” She couldn’t believe he would dissuade her now, after he’d called her to tell her the child had improved and then had let her stick around. But that warming trend had suddenly been reversed.

  “Until the Sheriff’s Department sets this matter straight, I think it’s best for you and the child if you stayed away from the hospital until everything’s settled.”

  Her hopes, which she had naively pinned on this man, collapsed. “But I thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” O’Rourke said. “You thought that since I rescued you from those vultures, loosely called reporters, that I was on your side, that you could get at the kid through me. Well, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Either you’re a relative of the child or you’re not. And I don’t like being used.”

  “You called me,” she reminded him, and watched his lips tighten.

  “I’ve had second thoughts.”

  “To hell with your second thoughts!” Her temper, quickly rising, captured her tongue. “I’m not going to hurt the baby. I’m just someone who cares, Doctor. Someone who would like to offer that poor, abandoned child a little bit of love.”

  “Or someone who enjoys all the attention she’s getting?”

  “If that was the case, I wouldn’t have tried to throw the reporters out of the hospital, now, would I?”

  That stopped him, and whatever he was about to say was kept inside. He stared at her a few minutes, his gaze fairly raking over her, as if he were examining her for flaws. She almost expected a sneer to curl his lip, but he was a little too civilized for outward disdain. “I’m just being straight with you. There’s a lot I don’t know about that baby who’s up in pediatrics, Ms. Hill. And a lot more I don’t know about you. If it were up to me, I’d let you hang around. Based on first impressions, I’m guessing that you do care something for the infant. But I don’t know that, the hospital administration doesn’t know that and Social Services doesn’t know that.”

  He turned then, and left her standing in the middle of the parking lot, her mouth nearly dropping open.

  * * *

  HE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why he’d come to her rescue in the hospital, only to shoot her down a peg or two.

  Instinctively, Dallas knew that she was a different kind of woman than those he’d met. There was something about her that attracted him as well as caused him to be suspicious. She seemed at once strong willed and yet innocent, able to take care of herself and needing something—a man?—to lean upon occasionally.

  There had been a desperation in her eyes, a pleading that he hadn’t been able to refuse in the hospital, but here, out in the light of day, she’d looked far from innocent—in fact, he suspected that Ms. Hill could handle herself in just about any situation.

  Dallas felt himself drawn to her, like a fly buzzing around a spider’s web. He didn’t know a thing about her, and he was smart enough to realize that she was only interested in him because he was her link to the baby. Yet his stupid male pride fantasized that she might be interested in him—as a man.

  “Fool,” he muttered to himself, kicking at a fragment of loose gravel on the asphalt. The sharp-sided rock skidded across the lot, hitting the tire of a low-slung Porche, Dr. Prescott’s latest toy.

  He must be getting soft, Dallas decided. Why else would he let a woman get under his skin? Especially a woman who wasn’t being entirely honest with him.

  He slid behind the wheel of his truck and flipped on the ignition. What was it about Chandra Hill that had him saying one thing while meaning another? He didn’t want to keep her from the child, and yet he had an obligation to protect the baby’s interests. Hospital policy was very strict about visitors who weren’t relatives.

  But the baby needed someone to care about him, and Chandra was willing. If her motives wer
e pure. He couldn’t believe that she was lying, not completely, and yet there was a wariness to her, and she sometimes picked her words carefully, especially when the questions became too personal. But that wasn’t a sin. She was entitled to her private life.

  Yet he felt Chandra Hill was holding back, keeping information that he needed to herself. It was a feeling that kept nagging at him whenever he was around her; not that she said anything dishonest. No, it was her omissions that bothered him.

  He crammed his truck into gear and watched Chandra haul herself into the cab of a huge red Chevrolet Suburban, the truck that last night he’d thought was a van. Her jeans stretched across taut buttocks and athletic thighs. Her skin was tanned, her straight blond hair streaked by the sun. She looked healthy and vibrant and forthright, and yet she was hiding something. He could feel it.

  “All in your mind, O’Rourke,” he told himself as he drove out of the parking lot and toward the center of town. He had hours before his meeting with Brian, so he decided that a stop at the sheriff’s office might clear up a few questions he had about Chandra Hill and her abandoned baby.

  * * *

  CHANDRA DROVE INTO RANGER, her thoughts racing a mile a minute. Automatically, she adjusted her foot on the throttle, managing to stay under the speed limit. She stopped for a single red light and turned right on Coyote Avenue. Without thinking, she pulled into a dusty parking lot and slid into one of a dozen available spaces, her mind focused on the infant. Baby John Doe. Already she’d started thinking of him as J.D. Kind of a bad joke, but the child deserved a name.

  Lord, who did he belong to?

  And that damned Dr. O’Rourke, telling her she shouldn’t “hang around” the hospital. That man—kind one minute, cruel the next—set her teeth on edge! Well, the less she thought of him, the better.

  Flicking off the ignition, she grabbed her jacket and climbed from the cab onto the sun-baked asphalt. A few blades of grass and dandelions sprouted through the cracks in the pockmarked tarmac, but the neglect seemed only to add to the casual allure of this tourist town. Most of the buildings, including the gas stations, coin laundry, banks and restaurants, sported a Western motif, complete with false facades, long wooden porches and, at the veterinary clinic, a hitching post.

  Years before, the city fathers had decided to mine whatever gold was left in Ranger—not in the surrounding hills, but in the pockets of the visitors who drove through this quaint village in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Those same far-thinking civic leaders had persuaded the town to adopt a Wild West atmosphere, and the mayor had encouraged renovating existing buildings to adopt the appearance of the grange hall, livery stable and old hotel, the only remaining structures built before the turn of the century, and therefore, authentically from the eighteen hundreds.

  In the past twenty years, all the businesses facing Main Street and a few more on the side streets reeked of the Old West. Wild West Expeditions had willingly embraced the idea.

  Situated near the livery, on the second floor of a building constructed in 1987 and made to look a hundred years older, Wild West Expeditions, owned by once-upon-a-time hippie Rick Benson, was Chandra’s place of employment.

  She climbed the exterior stairs, noticing a soft wind rush through the boughs of a birch tree, spinning the leaves so that they glittered a silver-green.

  The door was propped open. The sign above, painted red and yellow, swung and creaked in the breeze.

  “Hey—I heard a rumor about you!” Rick greeted her with a toothy smile. He was a big man, six-two with an extra twenty pounds around his middle. His hair was extremely thin on top and had turned to gray, but he still wore his meager locks in a pony tail that snaked halfway down his back. He had a flushed face, an easy smile and no enemy in the world. Not even the mother of his children, who, in the seventies, he hadn’t bothered to marry, and ten years later hadn’t needed to divorce when she took the kids and packed them back to “civilization” in St. Louis.

  “A rumor, eh?” Chandra hung her jacket on a peg near the door. The interior of the establishment was as rustic as the rest of the town. Rough-hewn cedar walls, camping equipment, including ancient snowshoes and leather pouches, hanging from wooden pegs, a potbellied stove and a long counter that served as the reception desk. “Only good things, I hope.”

  “Something about an abandoned kid. Found by your mutt down near the creek. I heard the kid would’ve drowned if Sam hadn’t led you to him.”

  “Well, that’s not quite the truth, but close,” Chandra said, thinking how quickly a story could be exaggerated in the gossip-riddled coffee shops and streets of Ranger. She gave Rick a quick rundown of what really happened, and he listened, all the while adding receipts on a very modern-looking adding machine, swilling coffee and answering the phone.

  “Why’d’ya s’pose the kid was left in your barn?” he asked once she’d finished with her tale.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee. “Beats me. That seems to be the million-dollar question.”

  “Must be a reason.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “The army jacket a clue?”

  Chandra sighed and blew across her cup. “I don’t know. The deputies took it and the blanket, but it seemed to me they think nothing will come back from the lab.”

  Rick pushed up the sleeves of his plaid shirt, which he wore as a jacket over a river boatman’s collarless shirt, usually cream colored and decorated by a string of beads that surrounded his neck. “Well, whatever happens with the kid, the press will be all over you.” He scowled, his beefy face creased. “Bob Fillmore has already called.”

  “We’ve met,” Chandra said dryly.

  “Watch him. He’s a shark,” Rick warned, his light brown gaze meeting hers. He never probed into her private life. Not even when, two years before, she’d shown up on this doorstep and applied for a job as a white-water and camping guide. He hadn’t lifted an eyebrow at the holes in her résumé, nor had he mentioned the fact that she was a woman, and a small one at that. He’d just taken her down to a series of rapids known as Devil’s Falls in the Rattlesnake River and said, “Do your stuff.” When she’d expertly guided the rubber raft through the treacherous waters, he’d hired her on the spot, only insisting she learn basic first aid and the lay of the land so that she would become one of his “expert” guides. She’d passed with flying colors. As far as she knew, Rick had no knowledge of her past life and didn’t seem interested. She doubted that he knew that she’d been married or had been a pediatrician. He didn’t care about the past—only the here and now.

  Rick rubbed his chin. “Fillmore wants you to call him back and set up an interview.”

  “And you don’t think I should.”

  Lifting a big shoulder, Rick shook his head. “Up to you. Just don’t let that piece of slime inside here, okay?”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “No.” He didn’t say why, but Chandra remembered hearing that Fillmore had once written a piece about Wild West Tours. The crux of the article had been a cynical evaluation of Rick’s alternative life-style, his “sixties values” in the late eighties.

  “What’ve we got going today?” she asked. “There’s a group coming in—when?”

  “Soon, but I’ve changed things around a little,” Rick replied, glancing at his schedule. “That group of six from the Hastings Ranch want a medium-thrill ride. I thought the south fork of the river would work for them. But I’ve got one lone ranger who wants to play daredevil…let’s see… the name’s McGee. Brian McGee. Young guy. Twenty, maybe twenty-two. He wants, and I quote, ‘the ultimate thrill—the biggest rush’ we can give him before he heads back to college. You think you want to deal with him?”

  With pleasure, Chandra thought, recalling the so-called he-men she went to college with. The boys who didn’t think she’d cut it in medical school. “Grizzly Loop?” she asked.

  “If you think he can handle it. I know you can, but who knows what kind of a nut this boz
o is. If he wants to play macho man and doesn’t know beans about rafting, you could be in a pile of trouble.”

  “I’ll check it out.”

  “Good. He’ll be in at eleven.”

  “And the other group?”

  “Randy and Jake’ll handle them. Unless you’d rather—”

  “Oh, no,” Chandra replied crisply, noticing the teasing lift of Rick’s brow. “Bring on Mr. Macho.” Maybe she just needed to throw herself into her work to forget about the baby and, most especially, Dr. O’Rourke.

  * * *

  THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT had ignored the Western motif of the other buildings in town. A single-story brick building, there wasn’t the hint of pretension about the place. Inside, the walls were paneled in yellowed birch, and the floor was a mottled green-and-white tile that was worn near the front desk and door.

  The receptionist recognized Dallas as he walked through the door. He’d helped deliver her second child two years earlier. With a grin, she slid one of the glass panels to the side. “Dr. O’Rourke!”

  “Hi, Angie.” He leaned one arm on the counter. “How’re the boys?”

  “Hell on wheels,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. Behind her desk, officers in uniform or dressed in civilian clothes sat at desks and pushed paper, drank coffee, smoked and cradled phones to their ears as they filled out reports. “But you didn’t come here to discuss the kids,” Angie said. “What’s up?”

  “I’d like to talk to the dispatcher on duty early this morning, around one-thirty or two o’clock. A call came in about an abandoned baby.”

  “Let me check the log.” Angie’s fingers moved quickly over a computer keyboard, and she squinted into the blue light of a terminal. “Let’s see… Here it is—l:57. Marla was on duty, but she won’t be in until ten tonight.”

  “But the call was recorded?”

  “They all are. You want to listen to the tape?”

  “If it’s all right.”

  Angie winked. “I’ve got connections around this place,” she said. “Come on in.” As Dallas walked through a door to the offices, he heard Angie ask another woman officer to cover for her, but his mind wasn’t on the conversation. He was, as he had been ever since meeting her last night, contemplating Chandra Hill.